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About Joanne

Hi I'm Joanne and I'm a card maker, scrapbooker, mess maker and Sunday School teacher on the Isle of Bute in the West of Scotland and this is my little piece of online craft space.
Here I'll be sharing the projects, products, hints and tips I love and also looking at those other crafters who inspire me.

First a little about me - I have always loved crafting in some form or another even if not always successfully. I was the only one of our primary 4 class who's knitted square wasn't even remotely square and so couldn't be added to a quilt. I made a squint mouse instead :)

I moved on to cross stitch in my teens as that could be more exact and couldn't go quite so wrong. Over several years I made various Birthday cards, loads of Christmas cards, several wall hangings and pictures both for myself and as gifts but the more complex the design the more colours and shades I had to sort out. It took so long to start to build up a design and in my twenties there were other things clamoring for my time.

I wanted to find a way to create cards and gifts that wouldn't take a week (or several) at a time and didn't leave me cross eyed sorting out colours. I got online in 2000 and while browsing on the internet I discovered the worlds of rubber stamping, papercraft cardmaking and scrapbooking.

I also had to choose an online name for all the discussion sites and variety of things to sign up to online so went with Jantyannie. That was my Dads nickname for me and was unusual enough that I could use it on all the different sites without having to continually change names or add numbers so for over 10 years now I've been Jantyannie or just Janty on all my online craft communities.

I learned early that crafting doesn't have to be completely perfect, after all no-one else knows what you were aiming for :-) I've since heard these kind of mistakes referred to as 'Happy Accidents'. It did mean I gave up on the more exacting forms of cross stitch as those are harder mistakes to hide but still like to occasionally do small pieces or bookmarks.

In card making and scrapbooking you're doing your own thing in the first place so there is no real right or wrong ways of doing it. There are techniques you can learn but it basically comes down to whether you like what you've made and if who you've made it for will like it.

I've had a few crafting parties in my home over the years and loved teaching my friends the basics of rubber stamping. Seeing their joy at that first stamped image and letting them rediscover the joy of 'colouring in' that many of them left behind in childhood. So when I came across Stampin' Up! while researching some new punches I wanted to buy it seemed a natural transition to become a demonstrator. I could get the tools and coordinated products I wanted and at the same time share the fun of stamping and shopping with my friends.

I'm no longer a Stampin' Up! demo but can put you in touch with some if you need any supplies.